Good Friday

I've just arrived back from the Good Friday service. I understand how so many artists, writers, musicians, creative people can have been inspired over the years by the Catholic Church. There is so much symbolism, so much mystery, so many moving aspects to the service.

Entering the church is haunting. So plain, so silent, people quietly moving to their places, shuffling along rows to let as many people in as possible. No flowers, no candles, no incense, no holy water. The statues, from the large crucifix on the wall to the little statues of Mary and Joseph that sit before the rows of (now extinguished) votive candles, are all covered in white muslin: Jesus enters Golgotha alone, without support, as he faces his final hour. The feeling of emptiness is completed by the open tabernacle ... empty now, the sanctuary lamp without its familiar warm red glow, we are reminded that God is dead.

The Mass began yesterday, during the Lord's Supper, the Maundy Thursday service, where feet were washed and bread and wine broken and blessed. So today, there is no bell, no processional hymn; the priest and altar servers walk slowly, solemnly, quietly in to their places, only pausing as the priest prostrates himself at the foot of the altar. The congregation kneels in memory of the events of that day, so many years ago now.

And then the Passion is read. The priest takes the role of Jesus; two women act as the narrator and as all the other individual speakers ... Pilate, Peter, the woman in the courtyard. We are the crowd, calling out for Jesus to be crucified: we have no king but Caesar. And so we are implicit in the crucifixion of Christ, our Lord. Our guilt is complete. But so will our redemption be ... We get to the point in the reading where Jesus cries out "It is accomplished!" The church goes silent. The priest kneels, the congregation follows suit. A long pause, a time of prayer, of reflection. Then we stand again, to remember that the story did not end there. We finish as the body is laid in the tomb.

The main aspect of this 3pm service is the Veneration of the Cross: a large wooden cross, with a marble looking statue of Jesus on it, held up by the altar servers so the congregation could kiss the feet of Jesus. The congregation, solemnly processing towards the crucifix, of every age, race, gender and socio-economic background, mingling together in shared adoration of Jesus. At one point, the Irish priest was sitting down, resplendent in red robes, and the African altar server bent towards him to ask him something, their two faces looking towards the edge of the church, side by side. Very picturesque. I could imagine a Rembrandt ...

At the end of the service, the final image is of the altar, a plain, cream stone table, with three crosses standing underneath it, surrounded by rocks on a baize, and the crucifix with Jesus, reclining on two purple cushions behind. On the altar is the silver ciborium, and thus, perhaps, a circle is complete.

We leave the church in silence: no holy water today, only reflections to carry with us. Outside, the world seems quieter. As I walk, steadily, surely, more slowly than usual, back home, I reflect on the crowd who had watched the crucifixion. They had had their entertainment, they had seen things they had not expected ... now they walked away, along the dusty road, sun shining as it is today, leaving Jesus behind, hanging there on the cross, only a few followers daring to stay, to wait, to take his body and tenderly prepare it for burial. The rest of us, we walked away, back to resume our busy lives ...

Perhaps to be inspired to draw, to write, to paint, to compose, to sing, to create.